Incidents Of Home And School Life – Part 2
I can never forget the rushlight, which dimly illuminated the sitting-room of the old house; nor the dips, which were pretty fair when there were not too many of them to the pound; nor the mould candles, which came out only when there was a party, or some special personage was expected. Short sixes were very respectable specimens of household lights. Composites have never seemed to me to be so good as the old sort, made of pure tallow; but I daresay I may be wrong. Nevertheless, I have no liking for composites in theology, but prefer the genuine article without compromise.
A night-light is a delightful invention for the sick. It has supplanted the rushlight, which would frequently be set in a huge sort of tower, which, to me, as a sick child at night, used to suggest dreadful things. With its light shining through the round holes at the side, like so many ghostly eyes, it looked at me staringly; and with its round ring on the ceiling, it made me think of Nebuchadnezzar’s burning fiery furnace.
Once, I thoughtlessly hung a pound of tallow candles on a clothes-horse. This construction was moved near the fire, and the result was a mass of fat on the floor, and the cottons of the candles almost divested of tallow; — a lesson to us all not to expose certain things to a great heat, lest we dissolve them. I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions, and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.
I have a distinct remembrance of a mission-room, where my father frequently preached, which was illuminated by candles in tin sconces which hung on the wall. These luminaries frequently went very dim for want of snuffing, and on one occasion an old man, who wanted to see his hymnbook, took the candle from its original place: out of his hand he made a candlestick; his finger and thumb he used as a pair of snuffers; and, finding it needful to cough, he accidentally made use of his mouth as an extinguisher. Thus the furniture of a candle was all contained in his own proper person.
We had practical fun with candles, too; for we would scoop out a turnip, cut eyes and a nose in the rind, and then put a candle inside. This could be judiciously used to amuse, but it might also be injudiciously turned to purposes of alarming youngsters and greenhorns, who ran away, under the apprehension that a ghost was visible. Other things besides turnips can be used to frighten foolish people; but it is a shame to use the light of truth with such a design.
During one of my many holidays at Stambourne, I had a varied experience which I am not likely to forget. My dear grandfather was very fond of Dr. Watts’s hymns, and my grandmother, wishing to get me to learn them, promised me a penny for each one that I should say to her perfectly. I found it an easy and pleasant method of earning money, and learned them so fast that grandmother said she must reduce the price to a halfpenny each, and afterwards to a farthing, if she did not mean to be quite ruined by her extravagance. There is no telling how low the amount per hymn might have sunk, but grandfather said that he was getting overrun with rats, and offered me a shilling a dozen for all I could kill. I found, at the time, that the occupation of rat-catching paid me better than learning hymns, but I know which employment has been the more permanently profitable to me. No matter on what topic I am preaching, I can even now, in the middle of any sermon, quote some verse of a hymn in harmony with the subject; the hymns have remained with me, while those old rats for years have passed away, and the shillings I earned by killing them have been spent long ago.
Many memories were awakened, one day, when I opened my copy of White’s Natural History of Selborne, and read the following inscription: —
STOCKWELL SCHOOL, COLCHESTER
Adjudged to
MASTER C. SPURGEON
as the First Class English Prize
at the Half-yearly Examination
December 11th, 1844
T. W. DAVIDS, Examiner
After I had once succeeded in gaining my position at the top of the class, I was careful to retain it, except at one particular period, when I made up my mind to get right down to the bottom. My teacher could not understand my unusual stupidity, until it suddenly occurred to him that I had purposely worked my way from the head of the class, which was opposite a draughty door, down to the foot, which was next to the stove. He therefore reversed the position of the scholars, and it was not long before I had again climbed to the place of honor, where I had also the enjoyment of the heat from the fire.
(Writing to The Christian World, in February, 1892, Mr. R. D. Cheveley, of Harrogate, who had been a fellow-scholar with C. H. Spurgeon at Colchester, said: —
“Stockwell House, Colchester, where Charles Haddon Spurgeon was being educated from the age of eleven to fifteen [ten to fourteen], was a thoroughly good middle-class classical and commercial school. Mr. Henry Lewis, the principal, was a man whose literary attainments were of a superior order, and for years he was assisted by a very scholarly man in the person of Mr. Leeding, whose death occurred only very recently. Mr. Leeding was the classical and mathematical tutor; his teaching was very thorough, and in Charles Spurgeon he possessed a pupil of a very receptive mind, especially with Latin and Euclid. I remember well that in both of these subjects he was very advanced, so that he left Stockwell House a thoroughly well-educated youth; in fact, quite as much so as it was possible for him to attain outside the Universities.”)
(In The Sword and the Trowel, October, 1890, Mr. Spurgeon made the following kind reference to the home-going of his old tutor: —)
The Norwood papers contain the following death: — LEEDING, — September 11, at the Academy, West Norwood, Edwin Sennit Leeding, aged 77 years.
This Mr. Leeding was usher at the school of Mr. Henry Lewis, of Colchester, in 1845, and I (C. H. Spurgeon) was one of the boys under his care. He was a teacher who really taught his pupils; and by his diligent skill I gained the foundation upon which I built in after years. He left Colchester to open a school of his own in Cambridge, and I to go, first to Maidstone, and then to Newmarket for some two years. Then we came together again; for I joined him at Cambridge to assist in his school, and in return to be helped in my studies.
He has left on record that he did not think that there was need for me to go to any of the Dissenting Colleges, since I had mastered most of the subjects studied therein; and his impression that I might, while with him, have readily passed through the University if the pulpit had not come in the way. His school did not succeed, for he was not well enough to attend to it; and in after years I found my old tutor struggling at West Norwood against the difficult circumstances which Board Schools have created for private ventures. He was a good man and true, — a man of prayer, faith, and firm principle. His life was full of trials, and I have seen him greatly depressed, but he has honorably finished his course, and has gone to his reward. I have always looked to him, among the many of whom I have gathered help, as my tutor. Thus the tutor has gone home, and the scholar must not forget that in due course he will follow.